Rence Warnings

“Remember we hear, we seek.. and you shall be found.. SAY NOTHING and live well.”

I had read it six times, and each time my breath became constricted and my heart leaped into my throat. It was a card, much like my own, only with blood staining its surface. A warning meant to silence me, a warning that made my blood run cold.

The sealed note had been left with the guard at the gate, and then the cook, until finally it was brought to me, the card dropping out and onto the floor in my haste to open it. There was no need for any physical confrontation because terror ripped through me as if it the malignant square of rence had been an assassin’s blade.

It was only when I heard the call of Charm that I quickly tucked both card and note back into the envelope, sticking it within the pages of my journal before closing it.

I could hear the cards whispering from across the room, alive with rebellious murmurs and discontent. They do not like to be threatened, or rather, have the one that tells their tale threatened. Even now, they lay in wait, pushing, planning, partaking of a knowledge that will hail a vast and dangerous disapproval.

I don’t know when.
I don’t know where.
I only know that they will take the opportunity to present their truths at a time most rewarding to their own agenda. It is that wisdom that frightens me the most.

I feel as if I’ve swallowed a slow acting poison, the point of my demise looming ever closer, a demise that does not necessarily need to end in death. I find that even when I’m in the house, a place that I should feel safe, that I’m constantly looking over my shoulder, searching for something, someone, who waits in the shadows.

They are beckoning me to do something I do not wish to do. They are requiring that I .. choose.